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Soil-borne pathogens restrict the recruitment of a subtropical tree: a distance-dependent effect

  • Community ecology - Original research
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Abstract

The Janzen–Connell hypothesis suggests that density- and/or distance-dependent juvenile mortality driven by host-specific natural enemies can explain high species diversity in tropical forests. However, such density and distance effects may not occur simultaneously and may not be driven by the same mechanism. Also, reports of attempts to identify and quantify the differences between these processes in tropical forests are scarce. In a primary subtropical forest in China, we (1) experimentally examined the relative influence of the distance to parent trees vs. conspecific seedling density on mortality patterns in Engelhardia fenzelii, (2) tested the role of soil-borne pathogens in driving density- or distance-dependent processes that cause seedling mortality, and (3) inspected the susceptibilities of different tree species to soil biota of E. fenzelii and the effects of soil biota from different tree species on E. fenzelii. The results from these field experiments showed that distance- rather than density-dependent processes driven by soil pathogens strongly affect the seedling survival of this species in its first year. We also observed increased survival of a fungicide treatment for E. fenzelii seedlings in the parent soil but not for the seedlings of the other three species in the E. fenzelii parent soil, or for E. fenzelii seedlings in the parent soil of three other species. This study illustrates how the distance-dependent pattern of seedling recruitment for this species is driven by soil pathogens, a mechanism that likely restricts the dominance of this abundant species.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Weinan Ye, Qinghua Kang, Yi Zheng, Minhua Zhang, Xubing Liu, Minxia Liang, Jie Li, and Hecong Wang for their help and advice with regard to many aspects of this study. We also thank four anonymous reviewers for valuable comments that helped improve this manuscript. This research is funded by the Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 31230013 and 31170398) and the Zhang-Hongda Science Foundation at Sun Yat-sen University. The experiments comply with the current laws of the People’s Republic of China in which the experiments were performed.

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  1. Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences/State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Meng Xu, Yongfan Wang, Yu Liu, Zhiming Zhang & Shixiao Yu

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  1. Meng Xu
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  2. Yongfan Wang
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  3. Yu Liu
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  5. Shixiao Yu
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Correspondence to Shixiao Yu.

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Communicated by Ines Ibanez.

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Xu, M., Wang, Y., Liu, Y. et al. Soil-borne pathogens restrict the recruitment of a subtropical tree: a distance-dependent effect. Oecologia 177, 723–732 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-3128-y

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